Erin Wunker is a feminist killjoy, and she thinks you should be one, too.

Following in the tradition of Sara Ahmed (the originator of the concept "feminist killjoy"), Wunker brings memoir, theory, literary criticism, pop culture, and feminist thinking together in this collection of essays that take up Ahmed's project as a multi-faceted lens through which to read the world from a feminist point of view.

Neither totemic nor complete, the non-fiction essays that make up Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: Essays on Everyday Life attempt to think publicly about why we need feminism, and especially why we need the figure of the feminist killjoy, now. From the complicated practices of being a mother and a feminist, to building friendship amongst women as a community-building and -sustaining project, to writing that addresses rape culture from the Canadian context and beyond, Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: Essays on Everyday Life invites the reader into a conversation about gender, feminism, and living in our inequitable world.

Praise for Notes From a Feminist Killjoy:"Wunker renders the label "feminist killjoy" one that readers can be proud to wear." --Becky Robertson, Quill and Quire (starred review)

"Women reaching out to one another, telling each other our stories. This is a structural tactic. It is also crucial to the work of justice and social change. Let us take Wunker's core message to heart and continue this messy, complex, and vital conversation." --Julia Feng, The Fem

"Erin Wunker's first book is a useful navigational tool even for those steeped in the precepts of women's studies. Her Notes represents a smorgasbord of reflection." --Sarah Murdoch, Toronto Star and Metro Canada (Toronto)

"Notes from a Feminist Killjoy is an answer to what is needed now--a selfconsciously contingent rejoinder to the question of "who needs feminism?" --Christina Turner, rabble.ca

Erin Wunker is the chair of the board of the national non-profit social justice organization Canadian Women in the Literary Arts (CWILA) and co-founder, writer, and managing editor of the feminist academic blog Hook and Eye: Fast Feminism, Slow Academe. She teaches Canadian literature and culture at Dalhousie University. Her book The Feminist Killjoy Handbook will be published in the fall of 2016.

"If a feminist killjoy was to keep a notebook, scrawl down her thoughts and feelings as they come up, record her memories, her readings, leave traces of herself as she is intertwined with others, then you might end up with a book rather like this one. Erin Wunker's Notes from a Feminist Killjoy takes up the figure of the feminist killjoy as a site of political potential, and as a method, a life method, a way of handling situations that are difficult and demanding: from becoming a mother, living in a gendered body, to dealing with rape culture. This book offers a powerful plea for a feminism that is willing to kill any joy that derives from inequality and injustice. All feminist killjoys will want this book on their shelves!" --Sara Ahmed